Enjoy some Metro rail caroling courtesy of RailLA! Streetsblog Los Angeles will be off for the holidays tomorrow and Friday. From the team who brings you Streetsblog, we wish you safe and fun holiday celebrations, a beautiful commemorative unlimited-use TAP card in your presents, and a year ahead of increasingly walkable and bikeable streets!

On Monday December 28, SBLA returns with three days worth of posts announcing the 2015 Streetsie award nominees. Please weigh in on your favorite livability leaders, from the elected, agency, business, media, and advocacy fields. Reader polls will be published December 28, 29, and 30 with voting extended through Tuesday January 5.

It’s that time of the year. The days are getting shorter. The air is cooler. The rains might actually be coming. And your inbox is peppered with pleas from worthwhile nonprofits asking for your year-end contribution. Streetsblog Los Angeles hereby joins that chorus. If you value the news you get here, we’d value your support. If you’re already ready to make a donation, click here and get started!

In 2008, when Damien Newton got Streetsblog L.A. off the ground, Southern California was a very different place. Few if any were predicting the dramatic shifts we’ve begun to see. Nobody predicted the generational decline in individual miles driven that we’re seeing. Nor the increases in bicycling, walking and transit.

Sure, before 2008 there were movements afoot for greater bikeability, walkability and transit, but there was little political consensus to move these forward. There was a sense that things could be better. Under Damien, Streetsblog quickly became an invaluable resource, highlighting local, national and international examples of just what livability could look like. Streetsblog gave Angelenos a sense of what was happening, and what could be.

In 2015, when Damien moved on to extend the California Streets Initiative’s reach to Streetsblog California and Streetsblog San Francisco, I became Streetsblog L.A.’s second editor. Los Angeles is a pretty different place. There are numerous elected officials who have made livability prominent in their words and deeds. In Seleta Reynolds, the city has its first truly pro-bike/walk/transit LADOT General Manager. LADOT now has standing People St programs where communities can transform streets into pedestrian plazas, or parking spaces into parklets. For the first time ever, LADOT is implementing protected bike lanes. The Planning Department is re-examining long-held car-centric mandates. Discussions that formerly focused solely on driver throughput, now take into account safety, equity, and quality of life.

Projects that agency staff said were impossible here – bus-only lanes, CicLAvia, bike-share, bike corrals, even sharrows – are becoming widespread and part of the everyday fabric of L.A. streets.

And it’s not just L.A., but success stories are coming in from all over Southern California: Temple City, El Monte, Pasadena, Santa Monica, and elsewhere.

We certainly can’t take credit for all this, but we’re proud of the roles that we’ve played to bring momentum to a truly transformative movement.

But there’s still a long way to go.

During 2015, Streetsblog kept you up to date on Mobility Plan 2035, the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge, North Figueroa, Rowena Avenue, pedestrian stings, parking reform, and much more. In each of these arenas, livability advocates squared off against backwards-looking opponents. Streetsblog attended critical hearings, interviewed decision-makers, plowed through voluminous documents, and quickly got coverage out so our readers would be informed and engaged.

If you turn to Streetsblog for important coverage of Metro, LADOT, transit, bicycling, walking, or even if you just keep abreast of current news through our daily headlines, we hope you’ll donate to keep us strong and courageous.

Streetsblog is a unique hybrid organization, both media outlet and advocacy organization. We have been watchdogs and witnesses, providing in-depth reporting on stories that other media ignore. We translated wonky bureaucrat-ese into everyday readable vernacular. We take a stand for a more livable, safer, and more equitable Los Angeles.

Did we mention you can win a Tern Folding bike? Every time you make a donation, you are entered into our nationwide raffle. Click on the image to go to our donation page.

By now you’ve gotten at least a dozen emails about #GivingTuesday asking you to donate to an important and worthy non-profit.

Today, throughout California, staff are working on stories and podcasts to cover and explain issues both locally and statewide. In Los Angeles, Joe is doing a deep-dive into a new report on parking and Sahra is examining the unintended consequences of a proposed crime fighting measure. In San Francisco, we’re going to be announcing a new editor in the next 24 hours. Melanie is working on a story about how restrictions on state transit funds limit their usefulness. I just got my first #DamienTalks up for December. In Santa Monica, Jason is programming Streetfilms and Chill for this Friday. In Long Beach, Brian is exploring the Terminal Island Freeway Removal Project.

All of these publications are nonprofits and rely on reader donations to keep going.

If you value the news, analysis, broadcasts and event programming of Streetsblog California, Streetsblog Los Angeles, Streetsblog San Francisco, LongBeachize and Santa Monica Next, then please consider making a donation today, right now. You can make your donations, here:

Note: California Streets Initiative, the nonprofit that publishes Streetsblog Los Angeles, Streetsblog California, Longbeachize, and Santa Monica Next, is teaming up with Abundant Housing LA (AHLA) to compete for an LA2050 grant to help make LA an affordable place to live for all.

To earn the grant, we either need to win a popular vote or be selected by the Goldhirsch Foundation Board. Either way, your vote is important. You can vote once per category, so just because you support another #LA2050 proposal does not necessarily mean you can’t support our proposal as well. If you value Streetsblog, and you’d like to support us and see us cover a broader spectrum of housing issues, please please please VOTE ONLINE NOW.

Los Angeles has earned the dubious distinction of being one of the most expensive places to rent in the country, eroding the diversity that has made this one of the great places to live.

For decades, we haven’t been building enough housing to keep pace with a growing population. This well-documented housing shortage means that increasingly middle- and lower-income households are finding themselves priced out of once-affordable neighborhoods, having to commute farther distances just to get to work, or having to leave the state altogether.

More housing at all levels of affordability will allow current residents to remain here while making room for newcomers and future generations to make their homes here.

Streetsblog Los Angeles and our partners are competing for LA2050 grant funding to get the word out about how housing, affordability, and livability interact. We need your online vote today. If we win, we hope to educate and mobilize new voices to speak up for new housing in a debate too often dominated by misinformation and fear of change. Through community organizing, online tools, and media coverage, we want to empower those burdened by high housing costs to become informed, attend hearings, submit comments and champion the construction of more places to live.

Not only can abundant housing help stabilize the cost of living for all throughout the region, housing in transit-rich walkable bikeable neighborhoods can help take cars off the road, reinvigorate our streets as public spaces, and allow people to live in an overall more sustainable way than decades of auto-oriented and sprawl planning have.

An influx of new voices demanding more housing can help expand housing options for everyone.

Come party with Streetsblog Los Angeles as we celebrate our success with the 2014 Los Angeles Press Club Awards banquet.

In addition to taking home the “Best Blog” award, members of our team picked up individual honors throughout the night including Sahra Sulaiman (Best Online Feature story, 2nd for Best Online News Story, 3rd for Best News Photo), and Damien Newton (3rd for Best Online Lifestyle Piece). SBLA sister publication’s Brian Addison also took home “Best Online Journalist.”

We’ll be returning to the home of our first fundraiser, the Los Angeles Eco-Village (117 Bimini Place) at 6 p.m. Admission is $25 on a sliding scale. Food and drink will be provided.

If that thrilling introduction wasn’t enough of an incentive, here’s ten more reasons to come party with us tomorrow.

1) Streetsblog (and our sister sites under the umbrella non-profit Southern California Streets Initiative) won six L.A. Press Club awards in three years including Best Blog (twice), Best Online Journalist, and three awards for individual articles.

2) It’s been almost three years since our last party at L.A. Eco-Village. The last one was a going away party for Joe Linton.

3) If you don’t have plans for CicLAvia, you can meet a ride buddy. Seriously, like 90% of the people at this party will be going to CicLAvia the next day.

4) Damien, Joe and Sahra will all be there, so if you want to complain about a Streetsblog L.A. story, you’re almost guaranteed a chance to meet the author.

5) New t-shirts! For the first time Damien ordered women’s and men’s sizes instead of “unisex.” Read more…

If you’re reading this… well, then, you read Streetsblog Los Angeles. Hopefully you’re here because you like what we do.

It’s not just readers like you that appreciate Streetsblog. We’re happy to also be acknowledged by the Los Angeles Press Club. Streetsblog L.A. was recently awarded the Press Club’s award for Best Group Blog and SBLA Communities Editor Sahra Sulaiman was awarded Best Online Feature for her article To Be or Not To Be a Gang-Banger: Is that Really the Question?

SBLA also pulled some runners up prizes: 2nd for Best Online News Story, 3rd for Best News Photo, 3rd for Best Online Lifestyle Piece, while our sister publication LongBeachIze’s Brian Addison won Best Online Journalist.

So we’re celebrating this weekend! Join team Streetsblog for a garden party at Los Angeles Eco-Village in Koreatown. Tickets are $25 on a sliding scale. The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. RSVP via Eventbrite. Share and get more event details at Facebook. If you’d like to donate to support us, but can’t make Saturday, you can always make a donation by clicking here, or sending a payment to damien@streetsblog.org on paypal. If you’re really 21st century, you can even make a bitcoin donation by clicking here.

Come celebrate with us while making sure we can continue to provide the stories that you read and enjoy!

Come party with Streetsblog Los Angeles and LongBeachize as we celebrate our success with the 2014 Los Angeles Press Club Awards banquet. In addition to taking home the “Best Blog” award for the second year in a row, members of our team picked up individual honors throughout the night including Sahra Sulaiman (Best Online Feature story, 2nd for Best Online News Story, 3rd for Best News Photo), and Damien Newton (3rd for Best Online Lifestyle Piece). SBLA sister publication’s Brian Addison also took home “Best Online Journalist.”

We’ll be returning to the home of our first fundraiser, the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Admission is $25 on a sliding scale. Food and drink will be provided.

We’ll have more details in the coming weeks, but if you already know you want to party with us, you can reserve your ticket at EventBrite.

Friends of Oscar Toledo, Jr., gather around the ghost bike put up at 47th and Normandie in South LA. Sahra Sulaiman/Streetsblog L.A. This photo is a finalist for an award from the L.A. Press Club

The votes are in, and while we don’t have all the final results, we do know that Streetsblog Los Angeles, LongBeachize, and Santa Monica Next are finalists for nine awards from the Los Angeles Press Club for our work in 2014.

Every year at this time, I mention that award-winning journalism doesn’t come free. If you want to help us celebrate our nominations, consider a donation at Streetsblog Los Angeles (donate here!), LongBeachize (donate here!), and Santa Monica Next (donate here!).

Streetsblog Los Angeles is up for “Best Blog” for the second year in a row. Last year, Streetsblog LA won this category in our first year as a finalist. Our competition for this award is pretty stiff with blogs from Truthdig, Hollywood Reporter, and KCET rounding out the category.

I’m pleased to welcome the newest member of the Streetsblog collective: Starting Monday, you can get news and commentary about safe streets, effective transit, and walkable development in the Mile High City by pointing your browser to Streetsblog Denver.

Streetsblog Denver arrives at a pivotal moment. The city is growing at an incredibly rapid pace, and it desperately needs streets and transportation policy that respond to these changes with intelligence and foresight. While there’s a huge grassroots appetite for walkable, bikeable neighborhoods and excellent transit access, for the most part the city’s streets remain stuck in the cars-first status quo. Working with an energetic advocacy community and the support of dedicated readers, Streetsblog Denver aims to change that.

Streetsblog Denver is run by a new, Denver-based non-profit of the same name, under the umbrella of the Colorado Nonprofit Development Center. The site is possible thanks to the generous support of The Gates Family Foundation, the New Belgium Family Foundation, Zeppelin Development, Joel Noble and Julie Hock-Noble, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Editorial guidance and technical support come from Streetsblog’s main office in New York. Many thanks to Streetsblog founding editor Aaron Naparstek for getting the ball rolling.

Streetsblog Denver Editor David Sachs

Leading Streetsblog Denver is editor David Sachs, who lives in Congress Park. David brings a background in journalism, communications, and political organizing to the job. As editor-in-chief of the Alexandria Times in Virginia, he regularly covered transportation and development. David’s been hard at work cultivating sources and generating story ideas, and starting next week he’ll be cranking out posts every workday.

Denver came of age in the highway era, and its streets still reflect that. Wide, car-centric roads like Colfax, Broadway, Colorado, and Federal feel more like Autobahns than functional urban streets. Key measures of street safety are heading in the wrong direction, with pedestrian deaths on the rise. While the city has a reputation as a bike-friendly place, the truth on the ground doesn’t measure up — bicycling on Denver’s high-speed streets will get your pulse pounding for all the wrong reasons.

While transportation planners have done well connecting the region’s suburbs to downtown via rail, it’s not enough. The Regional Transportation District still caters to Denver’s suburban past. Its rail lines circle the city but barely penetrate it. For city dwellers, Denver’s neighborhoods remain fragmented by a landscape designed for cars, without effective transit to connect them.

But as a young city, Denver is also very capable of envisioning a new way of doing things.